This patent application relates to on-chip impedance termination circuits, and more particularly, to on-chip impedance termination circuits that are programmable and dynamically adjustable.
Integrated circuits have input/output (IO) pins that are used to transmit signals into and out of the circuit. An external termination resistor can be coupled to each IO pin to provide impedance termination. An impedance termination resistor reduces reflection of input signals on a transmission line coupled to an IO pin. Signal reflection causes signal distortion and degrades overall signal quality. A termination resistor can be selected to match the impedance of a transmission line to eliminate or reduce reflection.
The use of external resistors for termination purposes can be cumbersome and costly, especially for integrated circuits that have numerous IO pins. For example, external resistors typically use a substantial amount of board space. External resistors also degrade signal quality because of the lumped capacitance associated with physically mounting (or soldering) the resistor on the board. The lumped capacitance doesn't behave as a transmission line and may increase impedance mismatch.
To address some of the problems with external termination resistors, on-chip impedance termination techniques have been developed. Prior art integrated circuits have provided on-chip impedance termination by coupling an on-chip resistor to an IO pin. The on-chip resistor can be formed from polysilicon. The resistance of an on-chip polysilicon resistor can vary more than 30% across the standard operating temperatures of an integrated circuit (e.g., −5° C. to 120° C.). Variations in other technology parameters such as supply voltage can also causes substantial variations in the resistance values of on-chip polysilicon termination resistors.
Another problem with prior art on-chip termination resistors is that their resistance values are fixed. Different IO standards require different termination resistances to match the impedance of different transmission lines.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide on-chip impedance termination circuits that can be dynamically adjusted to match the impedance of different transmission lines and varying operating conditions.